All the Kind Strangers - 1974

It's getting late and you are driving down a rural road with nothing but flat land on all sides when you see a small child, maybe around seven or eight years of age walking along side of the road with a bag of groceries. You can see there is nothing ahead for miles. Do you stop and offer the child a lift? That is how this film begins.

OK, so you might actually offer the child a ride but lets look at this a little different. You are not you but you are Stacy Keach. You are dressed in a loud, red Hawaiian shirt and are driving a convertible. Here is the Catch-22 situation. You want to help, to give the child a ride, but what kind of a child would except a ride from Stacy Keach in that shirt? Only a child who is up to no good.


So that explains the plot of this film. Stacy was too stupid to figure this out and take the child home, into the middle of no where, to the boys creepy family. All Kind of Strangers is not a good movie and I should have known before I even put in the DVD. How? The Jeff Kelley red flag system. Red flags are those warning signs that don't necessarily mean a movie is bad, but seen to give you a moment to thing about the possibilities. When enough of those red flags are blowing in the wind, it is a good chances you'll be a sleep before the 1 hour mark.

The first red flag of All Kind of Strangers is that is was a made for TV film in the mid 1970's. That's a huge red flag! Next, well, Stacy Keach. Now I really don't have a problem with Mr. Keach, he was great in Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke. He just doesn't have a great track record of making quality films.. Also John Savage and Robby Benson, need I say more? And the last flag was the fact that this film was in one of the Mill Creek 50 packs, which usually means it is in the Public Domain, which means the network who produced this film didn't think enough to keep its copyright.

The film starts out with an fairly intriguing premise. Stacy Keach finds himself in a old farm house with a bunch a scary kids, a couple of angry, protective dogs and a "mother" who seems to be trapped just as he is. They want parents and now must decide if Stacy is good enough to be"dad". and then this interesting, although typical, plot just falls flat. I won't spoil it for you but, well, nothing really happens. Oh wait, a snake gets killed.

If you are really interested in seeing this "film". you can find the complete film on YouTube. This begs another question? What kind of a person takes the time and energy to put this film on YouTube?